What is the life span of a flash drive generally? Mine is old but only had moderate turnover in data (it was my college one). Note sure if I should just use it for redundant photo storage. It’s a one gig.

Thanks!

Geri

That’s a great question, Geri. I had no idea what the life expectancy of a USB drive was, so I had to do a little research. I expected that it would be somewhere around 5-10 years, but unfortunately it’s not something that is impacted as much by time as it is affected by use frequency. So, the fact that you didn’t use it that much in college may serve you well.

There are two factors that affect how long your USB flash drive will last, the rating of the flash memory itself, and the rating of the USB connector. The USB connector is the part that is most likely soonest to fail. USB Type A plugs are rated at 1,500 connections. So, after you’ve plugged your thumb drive in 1,500 times, you are at risk of it failing. That seems like only a little, but if you only plug and unplug your thumb drive once a day, it should last at least 4 years without giving you any problems. However, let’s say you plug and unplug your USB thumb drive 4 times, (arriving at work, two breaks, one lunch, and finally going home), your USB drive would only last about a year before it could potentially fail.

The other factor that determines whether your USB flash drive will live long enough to collect Social Security is the rating of the flash memory. Some USB thumb drives use SLC (Single-level cell) memory which is rated for 100,000 write cycles, but the vast majority of flash drives use MLC memory because it is cheaper, but it is only good for 10,000 write cycles.

So, to answer your question, it depends. Since you didn’t use it a lot in college, I would guess that you’ll probably get another few years out of it if you use it sparingly. If you use it constantly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t last a year.

 We answered this question, “How long will my USB thumb drive survive?”, on Episode 16 – We Took The Lollipop.